You're Not Her
by tinylexie
Summary: As a man lies beside a woman, he can't help but think about another woman - the woman that he truly desires. Warning: Slight sexual implications.


Moonlight streamed through the bedroom window and onto their naked bodies. The man could hear the woman laying next to him on the bed still panting heavily from having their bodies joined. He glanced over at her. The woman's hair was the right color. The woman's eyes were the right color. But everything else about the woman was wrong. This woman was not her. This woman was not the woman that he truly desired. This woman was not the woman that he hoped to one day love and have a family with.

The woman's eyes were the right color, but her eyes were not as beautiful as those of the one that he truly desired. This woman's eyes were full of blind devotion, but her eyes were full of spirit and passion. He was tired of women who looked at him with such blind devotion. He was tired of women who practically worshipped him. It was not enough to satisfy him. He needed the woman he desired. He needed her rage, her emotions. She held the power of both great love and deep hate. Too extremes in the same woman. Never before had he saw such a combination in a woman.

The woman's eyes were the right color, but her eyes were not as beautiful as those of the one that he truly desired. This woman's eyes were only capable of the emotion of devotion. She was so weak that it sickened him. But his true desire was different. Her emotions ran from despair to anger, along with so many other emotions. She had cried out in pain, and tears had fell down her face. But that did not make her weak. In fact, her capacity for such emotions made her strong. On one hand, she was loving, caring, and protective of those that mattered to her. On the other hand, she despised those she saw as enemies. She despised him with an overwhelming passion. The tears in her eyes had failed to hide the spirit that also lived in those eyes, those beautiful eyes, those eyes with no equal.

For most of his life he had seen tears and other such emotions as weak and pathetic. But she had made him realize that showing love and concern for another did not make you weaker. Instead, it made you stronger. Love combined with hate gave you a power that hate alone could not give you. On the other hand, love combined with hate gave you a power that love alone could not give you. He had slept with many women whenever he had desired a moment of passion, but he was always left deeply unsatisfied afterwards. All those moments of passion had failed to fill the emptiness inside him. She was different, however. Never before had he seen a woman capable of both tearful fear for the one that she loved and enraged vengeance for the one that she hated. On the one hand, love did not make her weak because she was also capable of hate. On the other hand, hate did not make her strong because hate alone was not enough to be powerful. Never before had he fled from anyone. Never before had he fled from a woman. But she had been different. Her passion and her spirit made her different from everyone else. Her passion and her spirit made her different from all other women.

She was truly special. There couldn't possibly be another woman like her.

Her sharp, hateful words towards him had wounded him in a place he had not even known existed. He had tried to wound by mocking her and her lover. In return, she had wounded him even worse. She had made him realize that he had been missing something important in life. She had made him realize that deep down inside his dark heart he desired someone to love and someone to love him in return. For the first time in his life, he had dreamed about marriage. For the first time in his life, he had dreamed about being a husband and a father and about having a wife and children. For the first time in his life, he had dreamed about having a family.

For most of his life he had kept his true emotions hidden. He had kept them hidden so deeply inside him that he had forgotten they existed. He had denied his true emotions for a long time, for way too long.

For most of his life he had falsely believed that expressing emotions of love, concern, and fear made you weak. She had proved him wrong. She had freely expressed all those emotions, but she had not been weak. Instead, she had been strong and powerful. Her rage towards him had drowned out her fear for her lover, but her caring concern for her lover had allowed that rage to be unleashed. No other woman was that way.

She made him want to show her what his true emotions were. She made him want to bring to the light what he had had kept captive in the darkness for so long, for way too long.

She was truly special. There couldn't possibly be another woman like her.

He felt a gentle hand touch his chest. It was the hand of the woman but not the hand of the woman he truly desired. Eyes full of blind, worshipful devotion looked at him. Eyes of that of an empty vessel looked at him. This woman was nothing. This woman had no passion, no spirit. For a long time he had not cared to search for passion and spirit in a woman, but the woman he truly desired had changed everything for him. He now wanted a woman that wasn't an empty vessel. He now wanted a woman that would freely hate him. He would rather fill hate than emotionless devotion. He wanted to feel something beyond just temporary pleasure whenever he laid with a woman. He wanted to feel passion, passion of both love and hate.

For the first time in his life he wanted someone permanent. For the first time in his life he wanted a woman that he would always enjoy spending time with, a woman that he would always love to spend the rest of his life with. For the first time in his life he wanted a woman filled with spirit and with life.

For the first time in his life he wanted a woman worthy of him; he wanted a woman that would be his equal. Only a woman such as that could fill the emptiness inside him. Only a woman such as that could make him feel complete.

He felt the woman's hand begin to run down his chest. There was a time when he would have enjoyed this, but everything had changed after he had met the woman that he truly desired. This woman he had just laid with was nothing to him. There was nothing remarkable or special about her. She was just another woman who wanted to brag to her friends about how she had laid with him and about how much she had enjoyed it. No doubt she would also brag to her friends about how much she had pleased him. She couldn't have been anymore wrong. She had not pleased him at all, not even for a brief moment. This woman was not the woman that he truly desired.

The wrong hand was running down his chest.

He banged his hand against the woman's hand before she could go down any further. Her hand was the wrong hand. Her hand was not the hand of the woman that he truly desired.

The woman released a slight cry of pain from the impact of his hand banging on hers, but he ignored her cry. Her cries were that of a weak, pathetic woman. The cries of the woman that he truly desired, however, were that of woman who was not afraid to show her true emotions. At the same time, though, those freely expressed emotions made her stronger rather than weaker.

Moonlight streaming over his naked body, he crawled out of bed rather abruptly.

"What's wrong, my lord?" the woman asked in what she thought was a seductive voice. To him, though, her voice, her empty voice, merely made her even more unappealing.

The woman's hair was the right color. The woman's eyes were the right color. But everything else about the woman was wrong. This woman was not her. This woman was not the woman that he truly desired. This woman was not the woman that he hoped to one day love and have a family with.

"You're not her," Darken Rahl growled in a dangerous voice as he angrily grabbed his blood red royal robes from the nearby chair. "You're not Kahlan."


End file.
